Samosa-stuff burritos, now broadcasted to a national audience
Eater San Francisco // by Luke Tsai
One of the real OGs of the Bay Area’s gourmet food truck scene, which emerged in the late aughts, Curry Up Now has been nothing short of a success story since its 2009 debut as a single, scrappy truck serving both traditional Indian street foods and wild (especially for that time) mash-ups — tikka masala burritos, deconstructed samosas, Indian-inflected poutine, and such. The company now has trucks and fast-casual restaurants all over the country — notably in Atlanta, New Jersey, and SoCal, in addition to across the Bay Area. And, as of today, it has a splashy television feature as well: It’s featured in the second episode of Season 2 of Ugly Delicious, the David Chang-hosted Netflix food series, which drops today, March 6.
The whole episode focuses on Indian food, and as a follow-up to a discussion of trendy, next-generation Indian fast-casual joints that serve a “hodgepodge” of different things, a couple of the show’s talking heads (including Eater’s own Sonia Chopra) drop in on a Curry Up Now restaurant in San Jose, where they chow down on a samosa-stuffed burrito and sev puri topped with guacamole.
It’s all part of a broader conversation on who gets to remix Indian food, and what it means when restaurants like Curry Up Now introduce Indian flavors to a broader, non-Indian audience.